Aim The current discharge process on the paediatric wards involves transcribing medications from one electronic system to another, this has led to errors and compromises patient safety. Discharges are also sometimes delayed due to patients waiting for their medications. The newly implemented discharge service involves pharmacists working closely with the medical team to identify patients for discharge as early as possible and to accurately transcribe medications onto the electronic patient record (EPR).

Method The pharmacist would attend the consultant-led morning handover or would liaise with the nurse in charge on the ward to establish discharges and transfers for that day or over the weekend if on a Friday. The most urgent discharges and any complex patients were prioritised. The EPR system would be used to generate the EDL’s, transcribe the medicines for discharge and add any other relevant written information. Any medication related issues would be clarified with the medical team. The prescription would be handed over to the medical team to be reviewed and signed. This would then be dispensed and checked by the pharmacy team. The patient/parent or carer would be counselled on their medications. Data was collected from November 2018 – March 2019, this included time informed about discharge, time EDL started, time EDL printed and time EDL completed. Other data collected included if any additional written information was provided to the GP and if any amendments were required after the doctor had reviewed the prescription. The data was inputted into an Excel spreadsheet and was compared against August – October 2018.

Results 152 discharge prescriptions were included in the service. The data was compared to the data from August – October 2018 which showed more than double of the prescriptions were completed in the morning between 9am-12noon (compared to 12noon-5.30pm) since the service started. Less prescription needed amendments at the point of screening and more prescriptions included additional medication related information. The quality of the prescriptions had improved and completing prescriptions earlier meant timely discharges, improved bed utilisation and improved patient quality. Positive feedback was given by patients, doctors and nurses as well as the rest of the ward teams.

Conclusion Communication has improved between the hospital and community care, as well as patient satisfaction and bed availability. A future development would be to introduce prescribing pharmacists within medical teams to streamline the discharge prescription process further, freeing up medical time and increasing the focus on medicines optimisation for all patients.